Hysteria (3 page)

Everything I have come to know about my treatments is
rendered useless.

Doctor Drake lays his hand on my stomach, “Take slow
deep breaths.”

He does not move his hand and I obey him, my shudders
calming and finally ending.

“Good,” Doctor Drake says, as he gathers up my shift,
lifting it above my knees and then higher. I startle and go to pull
it back down, but catch myself and stretch my fingers at my
sides.

His touch is not seductive, but assured and I tell
myself to calm down. If only he were older, more haggard, as not as
handsome as he is, all would be well. He would not raise these
lightening feelings within me and I would go happily on my way a
content-- a most content patient.

The table starts to warm with my body heat, and
Doctor Drake places my legs further apart making the cool air chill
my nethers. My breath catches and my nipples chafe against my
corset.

“Close your eyes and imagine yourself in a place that
relaxes you,” Doctor Drake says so calm and smooth, knowing somehow
I will do his bidding even though I would be more pleased to watch
the expressions of his face.

He looks at me, like a father asking obedience of his
child and I yield.

My eyes close and although I try to think of a place
that is comforting to me, I fear I cannot. For this place, this
room, is all of the comfort I have in this life. And so I imagine
myself on this very table as I am now, but with a man such as
Doctor Drake loving me, the woman, who hides inside Constance the
patient.

His warm purposeful hands are sure and solid, moving
up to my sex and parting my slit. Cool air is a sharp change and
not unwelcome. His hands pull away and a stab of fear pierces me,
that I am ugly or disfigured in some way, but he takes my legs and
places them on either side of the table so that my calves hang down
and I am fully opened to him.

It is a very vulnerable position and I open my eyes
to make sure of Doctor Drake, and he gives me a reassuring smile.
“Close your eyes again,” he says, soothingly and I obey returning
to my very real day dream.

His hands return to my sex and they open me more
fully than before. His fingers brush my pearl and my nipples
stiffen as if they were attached.

Doctor Drake’s hands leave me again, and I watch him
as he walks to the apothecary, opens it up and brings back a jar of
what seems to be a liquid.

“Constance, close your eyes.” I glance at the jar
again.

“Lubricant. It will ease the way, like grease for the
skids of a ship.”

My heart patters in my chest and I close my eyes
straight away. I’m so absorbed in anticipation, I think I hear him
chuckle.

I hear the cork come of the jar and cold oil pours
over my sex, trailing down between my legs and to my spine. It’s a
lovely slick feeling, cool and warming almost immediately and his
hands cover me just as I accustom myself to the experience.

His one hand presses on my abdomen, low, right above
my pubic bone and his other hand covers my mound fitting it like a
glove as his thumb enters my slickened sex and grips the top of my
bone from the inside. He begins to rub his thumb in a circle and it
is all I can do to not leap or melt, the feelings are too confusing
to separate. One thing I am sure of, he would not need lubricant
now.

The web of his hand rubs my pearl, his thumb probes
my insides and the hand that presses remains sure and still,
bracing me against the table as the tremors begin to radiate out,
even down to my toes.

A moan slips out from my lips and I raise my arms to
cover my eyes even though I have not opened them.

This is all too soon but I am devoid of the power to
control my response to his glorious hands that are bringing me
further to the stars than I have ever traveled.

“Good,” Doctor Drake says under his breath. Not a
whisper of a lover, but I imagine it so.

Suddenly his hands change and he slips two fingers
inside me, but still bracing me on the table and I need it when his
fingers start to rub up towards the hand that is on my stomach, as
if they would touch were my body not between them. Amidst this
explosion of sensation he starts to press upon my pearl and
alternately rubbing it. I feel full and slick and known and the
slow heady pulses grow stronger, overtaking my lower body in a
paroxysm more powerful than I have ever had. I gasp and pant as
they undulate through me.

“Do you need another?”

God, what kind of question to ask.

My mind is so fractured into sparkling pleasure
pieces I cannot answer right away. Of course I do, but moreso I
want to think about why my mind, after all of my training, has
betrayed me.

I fear to open my eyes and let Doctor Drake see my
soul, and so I wait. I wait for my heart to stop pounding and for
the need to keen to flee. For my legs to be a functioning part of
my body again so I can stand straight and walk out of this room
with the shred of dignity I have left.

“Constance?”

How evil of me would it be to enjoy the thread of
worry in Doctor Drake’s voice?

I open my eyes and meet his molten brown ones so very
concerned and staring into mine. He smells clean and crisp and so
warm. My heart leaps, but I know what I see is care for a patient
and that knowledge makes my answer easier.

“That will be all Doctor Drake.”

He blinks at my words, but nods and backs up enough
so that I can sit up and manage to work myself off the table. My
legs are still trembling, but I place them very carefully one in
front of the other and escape behind the curtain.

I hear him as I dress, his courteous footsteps not
too loud, respectful of my turmoil. As I pull my shirtwaist
together to button it he asks, “I would like to see you again next
week Miss Gerald.”

I do not answer, I cannot, but my body thrills at the
thought.

“Miss Gerald?” Doctor Drake pauses in his task and
quiet looms.

I snap the curtain back and hold my chin up. “That
would be acceptable.” And I try not to run as I walk past him and
out the door, knowing all the while that I will not return.

* * * * *

It has been a fortnight since my last treatment and a
fortnight since I last ate a full meal. A fortnight since I bathed,
a fortnight since I have left my room, a fortnight since I have
spoken to another human being.

My sin was refusing to go for treatment. With
everything that is in me I want to. I do. But I cannot bear to have
every human touch in my life be an empty one. My soul cannot
withstand anymore, and so I accept my punishment for it is far more
tolerable.

Mother brings me milk and bread and allows the door
to be unlocked so the maid may take away the chamber pot.

In turn, I wear nothing but a chemise and wrap day
and night. I had rubbed myself into a frenzy whenever I pleased. I
would have gladly accepted my fate for life had I been able to
pleasure myself so, but the devious thrill of self ministrations
soured all too soon and I had not even desired to after the first
few days of wild abandon.

Now I wile my hours pacing the room wondering how I
can get out, and even if I could. Where would I go? How would I
live? It’s easy to judge decisions when the observer has options.
But I have none. I am nothing if not a realist. I had to be to
survive my mother and father. So I know what lay ahead of me if I
am able to escape. I would end up a street person. A soiled dove. I
laugh, and sound none too sane even to my own ears. Wouldn’t that
be a twist of fate.

Someone knocks at the door and I stop, my bare toes
rolling up the rug. Mother would let herself in. Mother would
unlock the door for the maid. Father hasn’t found his way to my
door for years.

“I demand you let me enter.”

It was Dr. Drake’s voice. The air around me grew
chill.

Someone came stomping up the stairs.

“I told you she is not available and you do not have
my permission to roam about my house, sir!” mother screeched.

“You will open this door for me, Madam. And you will
do it now,” Doctor Drake said, his voice growling and venomous.

I run to the window and bang the sash upwards with my
shoulder but the nails mother has closed it with bite and tear into
my skin.

“Miss Gerald, are you within?” Doctor Drake asks.

“It is the maid’s quarters, sir! Now leave my house
immediately!”

My hand flies to my mouth. I gasp and my throat feels
as if a yarn ball is stuck in it.

I heave myself at the sash again, seeing the blood
trail down my arm but not feeling it.

“Miss Gerald, I am coming in.”

The door starts to rattle on its hinges, as if it is
being dashed with a battering ram.

I run to the dresser and pick up my brush and start
to bang it against the glass panes. I know where they will take me,
and there I will not go alive.

The panels of the door start to break and my mothers
screams can be heard throughout the house.

I take the brush into both hands and lift it over my
head bringing it down with all of the strength I have left, and the
glass shatters under my force, crashing in knife like shards all
around me.

The door jamb gives way, throwing wood splinters into
the room. Doctor Drake rushes in followed by the billowing banshee
that is my mother. I look down to the lawn and know that I cannot
jump out the small opening of the broken pane, but I claw at the
window more, and it turns red under my attack.

Doctor Drake rips a sheet off of my bed and runs at
me almost as mad as my mother behind him.

“My God, my God! What have you done?” he yells, at my
or myself, I do not know. He wraps my hands up in the sheet and I
stare at him, his words ringing in my ears as if he is speaking in
another language.

Mother jumps at him from behind and flails at his
head looking like a monkey I saw at a zoo when I was a child, and I
begin to laugh that crazy laugh I did before.

Doctor Drake turns away from me and takes both of
mother’s arms, bending them and twisting them behind her. She is
screaming still but not flailing and he shoves her into a wall.
“Shut up you heathen whore,” he yells to her.

My eyes make their way back to the window and I think
that maybe if I just lept…

Dr. Drake leaps at me, bringing me down to the floor
and I scream and scratch at his face, grabbing his hair and yanking
with all my might. I will not go to an asylum. Never.

“Calm! Calm!” he whispers harshly into my ear, and I
realize that he is on top of me, pinning me down, his cheek to mine
and I freeze.

“Calm,” he says again.

Now I am panting under him like a hunted fox, and I
can do naught but listen.

“I am not going to bring you to an asylum.”

How did he know my thoughts? I do not believe him.
Mother can have me committed with a whim and I know that she will
not tolerate this vulgar display. If father were not head of the
house and needed to maintain her financial freedom (it is very easy
to get a crazy man to sign any papers she wishes) she would have
him in a room next to mine.

I take a deep breath and start to buck under him.

“I promise. I promise,” he says.

“How?” My voice is so ill used it comes out
hoarse.

I felt him pause. “You were screaming for me to not
take you to the asylum.”

I did not know. And he knew I had not realized. “No,
how did you know she had me locked in here.”

“You did not make your appointment. I came to check
on you, and when I found the house you were pacing in the window
like a ghost.”

I nodded.

“We must go. I will take you to the hospital. Do not
say a word. Do you understand?”

Again I nodded.

He raised himself off of me, kneeled at my side and
wrapped the sheet around my bloodied hands and the rest around my
shoulders. He helped me up, and whisked me out of the room, but
paused and took account of my mother sobbing on my bed.

“She is now my ward. You give up all rights to her
and if you so much as look her way, I will have you and your
husband judged unfit and sent to an asylum where you both
belong.”

And just like that, he saved me.

* * * * *

Two years later . . .

I kneel in the warm spring ground and dig a hand full
of Epsom salts into the soil around the roses, not caring that my
dress would be soiled. Soon they would cover the porch roof with a
carpet of dark pink flowers, their heavy scent wafting into every
room of the house. I will bring their almost thornless blossoms in
buy the handfuls and place them all over the house. Such a prize
was worth the scolding of Mrs. Rhodes.

Joseph comes silently around the corner of the house.
“Tsk tsk. You know you should put a rug under your knees.”

“Doctor Drake, you scared me.”

He reaches down and draws me up. “No more Doctor
Drake. You are to be my wife. Please, call me Joseph.”

I worry my lip with my teeth. In my mind I have
called him many things, including Joseph, but I’m afraid the spell
would be broken if they leave my lips.

Silence pauses pregnant between us.

“One more day, Joseph.”

His smile would have made the roses bloom. I know it
did so for my heart.

“Yes, one more day.” He gazed at my lips and heat
flamed my cheeks.

I knew what he thought, for I had thought the same.
He had not touched me in those ways in two years. It would have
gone against principal for I had become his ward, but now we both
remembered. He knew my body, but I had no knowledge of his. In one
night, I would know him, flesh to flesh. The slow throb between my
legs had been building and had he felt between them now my body
would have given my secrets away. How I had fantasized about Joseph
night after night. How I remembered his hands working my nethers
into a crescendo, or how his shaft would differ from the machines
he had used on me. How I wanted to explore his body and know it,
the way he knew mine. To see if his shaft would make me orgasm just
the same.